


creased and yellow

by queenjameskirk



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bill Denbrough is a martyr, Blood, F/M, M/M, Multi, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-28 08:14:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14445099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenjameskirk/pseuds/queenjameskirk
Summary: The day Bill Denbrough dies, Mike goes home and inherits the family farm.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends. this is a story that's been sitting in my WIP folder since like, October that i am finally getting my ass in gear and posting! this is based on one of the first prompts i ever received on tumblr and i hope the person who sent it in has stuck around long enough to see it posted! 
> 
> this is dedicated to e, my muse and my confidant. thank you so much for inspiring me and giving me the strength to carry on when i wanted to give up on this!!! 
> 
> special thanks also to hannah for being my biggest fan and the kindest cheerleader anyone could ever have. 
> 
> find me on tumblr @cryingbilldenbrough

_mama took me aside_   
_and she tried to change my mind_ _  
she said, “don’t waste your time in lookin,”_  
 _there’s nothing, nothing left to find,”  
_ _there’s nothing, nothing left to find_

  


The day Bill Denbrough dies, Mike goes home and inherits the family farm.

 

“No,” It says, holding Bill in a headlock and shaking a finger at them, “I’ll take him,”

 

Mike watches as Bill struggles once, tears in his eyes, and then sets his jaw. Only knowing Bill for a little while now, even Mike can tell how dangerous that look of resignation is, knows the look of a man ready to accept his fate. The steel bar in Mike’s grip feels like it weighs a ton, the adrenaline of the day catching up to him and leaving him exhausted, ready for all of this to end.

 

“I’ll take all of you and I’ll feast on your flesh as I feed on your fear,” The clown promises, its unnatural yellow eyes drifting to stare at them all separately. Mike can feel it bore into him, setting deep down into his very soul. The Deadlights swirl in Its eyes, beckoning them all in.

 

“You’ll just leave us be,” It intones. “I’ll take him, only him, and I will have my long rest. And you will all live to grow and thrive and lead happy lives,”

 

It giggles, spit slipping down Its chin. “Until old age takes you back to the weeds,”

 

A strange sort of silence settles over them, an anticipation. It’s like they’re all waiting for somebody else to do something, to settle their battle once and for all. But they’re silent, scared and tired. Nobody seems willing to make the first move.

  
“Leave,” Bill says, voice cracking and hoarse, “I’m the one who dragged you into all this,” A tear is falling down his cheek. Mike watches it, transfixed as it tracks over the curve of his pale face and shines in the light of the Deadlights.

 

“I’m s-s-so sorry,” Mike turns and looks around the group, at Eddie covered in muck and mud and shaking with barely repressed terror and anger. Stan still has tears tracking down his cheeks, pink with blood that spills out of his cuts, and Ben’s chest is heaving with loud breaths. It feels like a dream, like all Mike has to do is blink and it’ll be over.

 

“Go!” Bill shouts and It twists a hand over his mouth, Bill’s feet kicking out in front of him in retaliation.

 

“Guys, we can’t,” Bev says, righteous. But the rest of them are frozen, watching with silent horror as Bill sacrifices himself for their safety. Mike’s eyes flick down to Richie, still on his elbows on the ground in front of them, shaking.

 

“It’s okay,” Bill says, and lets the fight leave his body. He closes his eyes and relaxes back, his sneakers falling to the side as he goes limp in the clown’s grasp. Pennywise smiles once more and before Mike can take a step forward, can force himself to stop all this, the clown winks.

 

Mike watches as It backflips down into the hole, dragging Bill down with him. Richie scrambles to his feet, shoes sliding in the mud on the floor, and he and Bev reach the hole moments too late.

 

They can hear Bill scream the entire fall, his voice fading into the darkness, and then he’s gone. The void swallows him up and the seven are six, their ties cut.

 

“We have to go after him,” Bev says, her eyes full of tears. She sniffs as she peers over the side of the hole again, searching and scanning for any sign of the clown and their friend. It’s an abyss of black, not even a flicker of light to guide them.

 

“He’s gone, Bev,” Richie says, voice hollow and empty. Bev spins around to look at him, eyes full of fire and anger. She looks deadly, like she could take all of them down right now in a haze of flame and smoke.

 

“You’re supposed to be his best friend!” she shouts at Richie. Her hands are shaking as she fists them in the front of Richie’s shirt, forcing him to look her in the eyes.

 

“He’d want us to go,” Stan pipes up. There’s still blood running down the bite marks on his face and he wipes his nose before setting his shoulders and looking at Bev seriously. “He’d want us to escape.”

 

Mike knows he’s right. He knows that Bill’s last dying wish was for the rest of them to be safe, to get out of here and live and thrive and lead happy lives.

 

But there’s this part of him that’s aching.

 

It’s sort of like a piece of him has been cut away, his insides scooped out and leaving him bleeding and raw. It’s dizzying, the pain, and Mike slides a hand down over his chest to check if it’s real after all, as if somehow the clown dug its fingers inside him and ripped something out of his chest.

 

But his shirt is dry, no blood pooling over his stomach and dripping down to the dirt floor. The pain intensifies though, grows white hot and burning, and Mike drops to one knee.

 

“Mike?” he hears Eddie ask, moving to his side. Mike turns his face to Eddie’s, seeking comfort even in the realization of their despair. Eddie wraps an arm over Mike’s shoulder, sticky and smelling of sewage and Mike leans into it, letting the smaller boy, practically a stranger, comfort him.

 

“Sorry,” Mike chokes out, pressing his hand into his chest to quell the pain, “I just--”

 

“I feel it too,” Richie whispers. Mike turns to look at him, squinting in the darkness. Richie’s fists are at his sides, shaking and white knuckled and Mike looks to Bev next. She’s flinching, rubbing her own chest with a shaking hand and Mike forces himself to push the pain aside and focus on his friends.

 

They’re all being affected by this phantom wound, gasping and clawing at their skin to figure out the cause. Mike knows what it is now, knows their ties have been cut and the frayed edges are bleeding.

 

Every part of Bill inside them is getting burned out.

 

Eddie leads the group back through the sewers, his shoulders heaving as he sobs. Richie walks beside him, linking their fingers, and Mike tries not to let his own grief consume him. Bev keeps throwing glances behind her, fingers tangled in the edges of her dress as Ben tries to tug her faster through the tunnels. She whispers something fierce to him that Mike can’t hear over Eddie’s sniffles, but Ben simply straightens his shoulders and hooks his arm around her.

 

They enter out into the daylight, sun shining happily over their dirt and tear-striped faces, and start to go their separate ways.

 

Their bikes are still hidden in the long grass of the Barrens, out of sight from passersby. Mike hefts his bike off the ground, grass and dust stuck in the chain and clumped on the basket. He remembers what feels like a lifetime ago, recalls hoisting Eddie into his bike basket and rushing him home while trying to avoid the potholes.

 

Bev rips her bike from the pile and swings her leg over the seat, already pedaling over uneven grass and rocks.

 

“Beverly, wait,” Ben calls as he hefts his own bike up. She’s already drawing distance between them, standing hunched over her handlebars as she navigates back to the road, and Ben rushes to catch up with her clumsily.

 

Mike’s just about to take off himself, bike away fast before any of them can see him break down, but he stops when he catches Stan freeze out of the corner of his eye.

 

He’s standing over Silver.

Bill’s bike is so much bigger than the rest of theirs, collapsed on top of Stan’s own wheels and pressing the handlebars into soft earth. It reminds Mike that there’s proof now, that no matter what wool It has pulled over the eyes of Derry, they will notice this. Someone will find Bill’s bike down here by the Barrens and wonder what happened.

 

Stan lets out a sob as he lifts up Silver, rust glinting in the sunlight, and he looks to the rest of them helplessly.

 

“We should get rid of it,” Richie says. Mike turns to catch his eye and Richie has Eddie pulled into his side, looking protective and shrinking at the same time.

 

“We should take it back to his parents,” Stan argues, kicking the kickstand up and steadying Bill’s bike on the ground.

 

“And tell them what?” Richie says, “Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Denbrough, but we killed your son. Don’t worry though, we brought you back his fucking bike to remember him by!”

 

“He’s not dead,” Eddie says quietly from his position at Richie’s side.

 

“Eddie,” Mike starts but the boy shakes his head. His hair is stuck to his head with mud and bits of it flake off as he moves. Mike pushes past the lump in his throat because he can’t let Eddie go on in denial, knows he can’t let them fight over something like that. “You felt it, Eds,”

 

Eddie touches a hand to his own chest, rubbing right in the middle like he’s remembering the pain. He shakes his head again but his shoulders are curled inwards, like he’s trying to squeeze himself smaller and smaller until he disappears.

 

“We have to get rid of it,” Richie says finally and moves from Eddie. He grabs the bike’s handlebars, ignoring Stan’s prying fingers, and leads it toward the banks of the river. Mike holds his breath as Richie grabs the frame of the bike in one hand and hefts it into the water, splashing mud and water up as it drops into the current.

 

“We can’t tell anybody about this,” Richie continues, his back to them as he watches Silver sink.

 

“What if It comes back?” Stan asks, voice raising. He’s picking at the side of his face, tracing over the cuts along his forehead, and Mike feels heavy. There’s a weight on his shoulders that keeps threatening to break his back and force him to his knees.

 

“It won’t,” Eddie pipes up, “You heard It. We traded Bill for safety,” He looks near tears again, his eyes welling up as he crosses his arms in front of his chest, cast dank and wet.

 

“Swear,” Stan says suddenly. He dips to the ground and picks up a broken glass bottle. It glints in the light, green with bits of paper label still stuck to it, and before Mike can object, Stan slices the palm of his hand open. “Swear that if It isn’t dead, if It comes back, that we’ll come back too.”

 

He walks to Mike, blood dripping off his palm and onto yellowed grass.

 

“Swear it for Bill,” he says and Mike nods. The bite of the cut is almost nothing compared to the dull ache in Mike’s chest and he squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to cry out from the relief of distraction from the pain in his stomach.

 

Stan goes to Eddie next and the smaller boy bites his lip as Stan cuts the hand without the cast on it.

 

“I’m not coming back.” Richie says when Stan turns to him. “I’m getting far away from this fucking town,” He’s got a wild look in his eye that Mike recognizes, the fire and fury that’s been bubbling under the surface ever since that first day Bill dragged him into Neibolt. But Stan doesn’t back down, just approaches Richie with the glass held in his uninjured hand.

 

“I’m not coming back,” Richie repeats, but it’s quieter this time. Mike struggles to hear it over the wind that whips the dry grass around them and over the rushing water below them.

 

“Until old age brings you back to the weeds,” Stan whispers, maintaining eye contact with Richie. He reaches out slowly with his bloodied hand, giving Richie all the time in the world to escape, and clutches the boy’s hand. He pulls it towards himself, cradling Richie’s fingers in his own bloody ones, and draws the glass across his palm.

 

They form a small circle, much smaller than Mike thinks it ought to be, and they grab each other’s hands. Mike has Eddie on one side and Stan on the other, Eddie’s hand trembling in his just a little bit.

 

They hold hands and they make their promise.

 

Later, Mike’s grandpa wraps his cut hand in a cloth bandage, complaining all the while for Mike’s penchant to hurt himself while biking. He’s fixing it by the light of a candle on the kitchen table, bent over the wood and grunting every time Mike flinches and squirms. Mike bites his lip and tries to distract himself from the stinging pain, looking out the window at the sun setting over the fields.

 

“Pa,” Mike starts. His grandpa hums in response as he finishes tying the wrap around Mike’s wrist. “Will you teach me to do the books tomorrow?”

 

His grandpa narrows his eyes at Mike, dropping his hurt hand in his lap and jutting his jaw out. Not for the first time Mike wonders what his grandpa knows about Derry, what secrets he’s been hiding all these years for the sake of keeping Mike safe. He wonders if his grandpa knows what’s down there in the sewers, if he has any idea of the infinity that awaits them in the Deadlights.

 

He wonders if his grandpa knows about It.

 

“Sure, Mike,” he responds after a while, drawing Mike out of his thoughts, and then blows out the candle on the kitchen table.

  
  
  


Bill Denbrough becomes another one of Derry’s lost children, a face on a missing poster that gets forgotten within the year.

 

The Denbroughs have a funeral for him, just as they buried an empty casket for Georgie. The plots are right next to each other, with headstones far too big for such small boys, matching smooth gray rock.

 

_George Elmer Denbrough, 1982-1988._

 

_William Zachary Denbrough, 1976-1989._

 

Mike doesn’t go to the funeral, can’t possibly bear to watch them sink an empty casket into the ground and keep quiet. He thinks if he had to watch the Denbroughs bury another son, the one they had lost and didn’t cherish, he might tell them the truth. It might all spill out of him, It and the sewers and Bill’s sacrifice. The guilt eats at him, remembering the fear and resignation in Bill’s eyes. And Mike is the one who killed him. He knows that. He knows he killed Bill the minute he agreed to go down there with them.

 

They all killed him, didn’t they? They made a promise to save and protect one another and yet let their compass get taken away, sacrificing himself for the rest of their safety and it fucking _kills_ Mike.

 

So on the warm September day that they bury an empty casket for Bill Denbrough, Mike gets up early and does his chores. He feeds the sheep and bales hay and cooks breakfast for his grandpa. He does everything he can to push the thought of Bill out of his mind, closes his eyes and tries not to picture Bill’s mom crying silent tears as she lays both her boys to rest.

 

A few days later, Mike is biking down Witcham street to the butcher shop, the joints of his bike groaning, and he passes Stanley Uris. Stan is standing by a telephone pole, the one Mike recognizes as the the final pole with Bill’s missing poster left on it. The rest of them have been washed away or plastered over, paper turning to mush in the October rain, but this one has survived. It has Bill’s smiling face on it, a description of his eyes and height and the clothing he was last seen in. Mike has the information memorized.

 

He doesn’t wave at Stan, doesn’t dare to let go of his handlebars lest he do something reckless like tip his bike over into the street. Stan looks up at him though, bandages gone from his face. His hair is cut a little closer to his ears, only curling over them a little bit, and Mike sees the angry red scar of Its teeth on his forehead.

 

Stan nods at him once, just a tip of his head, and Mike turns to look at the road again. He’s not going fast enough to pretend it’s in the name of safety, but the brief eye contact with Stan made something light up deep in his chest and Mike will do whatever it takes to sever that tie. He doesn’t deserve the warmth of the Losers Club anymore, never did.

 

When he turns back, he sees Stan rip down the final missing poster, the last evidence of Bill Denbrough’s life in Derry, and considers it the turning of a page. The end of a chapter.

 

Bill Denbrough is Derry’s _last_ lost child.

 

It dies with him, tendrils of pain and fear retreating back down to Its den in the sewers and it seems like Derry breathes a sigh of relief as the fog settles over the town again.

 

Everyone forgets that long, wet summer that drifted into fall. They forget all about the curfew and the missing posters and the shadow in the corner of their eye.

 

Everyone forgets but the six remaining Losers.


	2. Mike Hanlon Makes a Connection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again to e and hannah for your wonderful wonderful beta-reading skills! couldn't have done it without you!

TWENTY SEVEN YEARS LATER

 

The alarm clock flashes, red neon in the darkness that hurts Mike’s eyes when he rolls over to shut it off. He turns back over, taking the blankets with him, and curls up with his knees drawn to his chest to look out his bedroom window. It’s a frosty morning, with dew frozen to the windowpane and the trees rustling in silent wind. Mike sighs, his breath showing just a little bit in the darkness, and curls his toes one last time before throwing the covers off his body and sitting up.

 

The sun has risen on another normal day in Derry, Maine and Mike Hanlon has a lot to do today.

 

He stumbles down to the kitchen, stairs creaking familiarly under his socked feet, and starts a pot of coffee. The curtain over the doorway to the dining room flutters as a tendril of heat waves off the woodstove and Mike drinks his coffee at the kitchen table. He grabs a pen and his notebook and makes a rough to-do list for the day.

 

He has to do chores first, as always, make sure the farm is running smoothly. He used to hire a couple teenagers from town to help him out but since local kids have started going missing again, parents are wary to send their young strapping boys out to the Hanlon farm to help feed the goats.

 

Racism is buried deep in the soil of Derry, a town with a history of murdering in the name of purity. Mike knows the entire population is suspicious of him, of that black bachelor living alone on his farm out by Route 2. He feels their eyes on him when he goes into town, heat that follows him down the aisles of the drug store and the farmers market. Their whispers drift in the wind, snatches of “What do you think he does all alone on that farm?” and “I, personally, would never buy meat from a _Hanlon_.”

 

Now Mike does his chores alone.

 

He puts on his warmest socks and slips his feet into mud-crusted boots, pulling on his jacket and a pair of thick gloves. The walk to the barn is freezing, wind cutting through his jean overalls and chilling him to the bone, but he reaches the warmth soon enough. The wood door slams shut behind him as he steps into the barn, assaulted by the smell of farm animals. His grandpa used to say it settled after a while, hay and sheep fur and feed digging down deep under his skin and soon enough he’d have forgotten what fresh air smelled like anyway.

 

But no, he hasn’t gotten used to the smell.

 

He has gotten used to the killing.

 

This past summer he had nearly 15 lambs. It had been a busy few months, a little colder than normal and so he’d found himself with cardboard boxes in his mudroom housing early birth lambs. One was even born on the first day of the new year, premature and still wet. Luckily Mike had found her before she froze to the grass in the pen. That August, she was sent to slaughter with the rest of them, a few months old and already finding themselves at the other end of Mike’s pistol.

 

It’s supposed to be humane. Grandpa told him when he was really young that the bolt pistol really just stuns the sheep, hits ‘em hard enough in the forehead to knock them out so they can be strung up and skinned. He remembers Grandpa holding his hands to the trigger, pressing the cold metal tip into a lamb’s forehead, urging Mike to squeeze his pointer finger hard enough.

 

But Mike looked into the sheep’s eyes and lost it. He couldn’t do it. Not when this innocent being, raised for this specific purpose, was looking straight at him. Mike just couldn’t bring himself to kill.

 

Then It happened. Then Henry Bowers happened.

 

Sometimes, when Mike’s alone in his big house and the fire in the woodstove is nearly out, just coals burning orange, Mike can still hear him scream. The sound of his body banking off the sides of the rock well, smashing into the ground below with a wet smack, haunts Mike. It keeps him up at night, sitting cross legged in bed and remembering the crazed look in Henry’s eyes as he wrestled the pistol from Mike’s hands.

 

That was true evil, Mike knows. He’s positive that Henry Bowers was truly possessed by something dark, something that filled up every cowardly crack in his body and taught him how to  channel his misguided teenage rage and racism and fear and put it into violence. Henry’s blood-soaked face, the evidence of him killing his father and his friends, is sometimes all Mike sees when he closes his eyes.

 

The other times, Mike sees Bill.

 

The point is, Mike is deadly now. He raises his lambs and then on the first day of August rounds them up in the barn, getting them nice and snug in their pens. He pulls the latch up to the gate by himself now, no Grandpa or uncles or farm hands around to help him, and takes care of the lambs one by one.

 

It’s hard work alone, the summer heat making his shirt stick to his back and sweat roll down his forehead and into his eyes, but Mike manages. He stuns them and then strings them up to bleed out, back aching as he hefts the rope and then ties it off to a post. He no longer has to take the meat into town on his bike, has a truck of his own that he drives with all the windows down and the radio turned high so he can’t hear the people of Derry talking about him all the way down Witcham street.

 

It’s nearing winter, frost on the early morning grass and crawling up the window panes. Mike started eweing a few weeks ago, sectioning off the females and sticking a ram in with them in order to breed a few more lambs in the coming spring. Now all that’s left to do is make sure their shelter is going to last through the winter and that they’ll have enough feed. He tightens the tarps over some of the pens, brings a frozen water hose inside to refill the water buckets, and checks on a few of his favorite girls.

 

He knows it’s ridiculous and sentimental to name the sheep, but Mike has always been a little too soft for this life, a little too doughy around the edges. It started with one, a troublemaker of a ram years ago, long dead now, that had reminded him so much of a friend from his childhood that Mike found himself referring to the sheep as Richie in his head. He didn’t mean to, had long ago vowed to not think of his old friends, but he couldn’t help himself.

 

The day that ram died, Mike cried. It was December and the tears froze to his cheeks and Mike promised himself not to name any of them after his friends again.

 

Now, they all get banal names. The ewe in the corner is Shelly and the one standing on a feed box is Betty and the ram who likes to bleat at three in the morning is Jack.

 

“Hey, Bets,” Mike says, running his hand over the sheep’s back. She’s his personal favorite currently, mainly because she presses her face into his side and huddles next to him, probably for warmth. She reminds him sometimes of a dog, looking for attention and affection, and Mike can do nothing but provide.

 

He leans over and grabs a handful of feed from one of the troughs, opening his palm and letting Betty eat from his hand, petting her head as she does. Shelly and Tara must smell the food because they then come trotting over, sniffing his overall pockets and his gloves and pretty soon Mike is surrounded.

 

The laugh spills out of him before he can stop it, wool tickling his nose as the sheep surround him in order to receive treats of their own, and Mike’s breath fogs into the air. It startles the sheep a little, a sharp burst of sound that makes them stumble back away from him, and the moment is lost. They get distracted and bleat and wander away from him in order to get water or hay.

 

Mike stands from the barn floor, dusting off his pants, and ventures back out into the cold.

 

The mudroom door gets slammed shut behind him as he stomps off the mess that is stuck to his boots, slipping them off and stepping carefully over the tile so as not to get his wool socks in the mud. He shucks his jacket and hangs it on the hook next to a big freezer that holds the overflow of meat. He returns to his kitchen table, snagging another cup of coffee from the pot on the counter, and turns to his to do list once more.

 

Chores, done.

 

Next up, run to town. He has a few things to pick up at the store, some groceries to buy unless he wants to spend another week eating peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches, and he wants to make a quick stop by the library. He’s been slowly but surely assembling a record, a reminder, of that Summer so many years ago. He doesn’t want Bill’s story to die with him, wants the entire town to know the great sacrifice their missing son made for them, the life he lost that they forgot.

 

He drinks another cup of coffee, blowing on it to cool it down so it won’t burn his tongue, and eats a couple slices of buttered toast. Then it’s back to the mudroom, sliding on a cleaner pair of boots so he doesn’t track mud all through the businesses of Derry. He used to make that mistake a lot as a kid, wearing his work shoes to deliver meat to the butcher and then detouring to the grocery store or pharmacy to pick up an ice cream with his allowance. The other kids would laugh behind their hands at him, giggling at the way he smelled like farm and how his white shirt was stained with sweat and god knows what else.

 

He deems his overalls clean enough to wear in public but he pulls on a new flannel shirt, clasping the overall straps over his shoulders and then slipping his coat on overtop.

 

The truck shudders before turning over, already acting up in the face of winter, and Mike mentally catalogues his finances to see if there’s space to buy a new battery. He made a lot of money on the lambs this summer but he had also replaced the kitchen stove in September and that took a fairly large dip out of the pot.

 

If only he were a better farmer, Mike thinks. If only he were more like Grandpa, or hell, his dad. Dad managed to balance the business and his personal life in a way Mike hasn’t caught onto. He feels like sometimes he’s too much like his Ma, too caught up in his head to pay attention to the things that should really matter to him.

 

His gravel driveway kicks up dust into the hub of the truck, settling over the dash and the wheel. It sticks in Mike’s nose and dissolves on his tongue, coating him too in dirt and rock. It tastes like the past, Mike thinks, tastes like things that should have been forgotten.

 

He hates this gravel road.

 

It eventually gives way to pavement though, the street that goes by the old Bowers farm and straight into downtown Derry, and Mike huffs hot air onto his hands to warm them up. He drives past the grocery store and straight to the library, intending to get his research done before he picks up the few things he needs at the market.

 

The librarians know him well by now. They greet him by name when he strides in the front doors, letting cold sunshine in for a moment before the entrance shuts behind him and the library is plunged into fluorescent light once more. He bypasses the fiction sections, the young adult area, the biographies, travelling deeper into the stacks to find the local history section.

 

Most of the books he’s already read once or twice, paged through on cold winter nights while wrapped up in bed. He’s checked out all of them at least a few times, taking them back to the farm in the hopes that the light of his home will help him find something new, something they missed all those years ago, but so far he always returns them with more questions than answers.

 

He picks a few of them out of the shelves, holding them under one arm as he makes his way back to a table tucked in the corner. He flicks the lamp on even though the daylight drifts in through open windows, and pulls up a chair to continue his research. He flicks through anthologies of Derry, oral history passed down through generations and finally recorded in history books.

 

Almost all of It is in there, written in flowery language and dressed up like mysteries. History remembers the Well House and the first 91 residents that went missing, but it doesn’t remember who stole them. Sometimes Mike doesn’t know how Its mystery went unsolved for so long, especially when It killed so many so messily.

 

He doesn’t understand how no one connected the dots until Ben Hanscom came to town.

 

Years after Derry had been settled, It struck with the Ironworks explosion, and then the Bradley gang exactly twenty seven years later. There are pictures and accounts of each day written in books, but there are also details that Mike has to get straight from the source. He interviews old residents, people who were there for the Bradley Gang shootout, people whose mom’s and dad’s were around for the Ironworks explosion. He tries to learn as much as he can from first-hand accounts.

 

But the history books omit the last incident, the last time It wrought havok upon them before that Summer, before the summer it took Bill.

 

Mike knows about The Black Spot because his daddy was there.

 

He told Mike about it long ago, long before Mike was probably old enough to hear all the gory details. He told Mike about it before he died, before the fire swallowed him up too.

 

_“Old people remember how things really went, Mike,” his daddy said, sitting at the kitchen table of the farm. Ma was out hanging clothes on the line, wind whipping her cotton dress around her knees, and Daddy was telling stories by the light of a candle. “They always remember,”_

 

_Sixty people perished in the fire of the Black Spot, all of them people his Daddy knew somehow. They were members of Company E and they were folks who lived on the outskirts of town and folks who went to the church on Neibolt. They were folks who wanted a place for themselves, a bar of their own where they could go to dance and play music and not have to worry about who was watching, about who would try to kick them out of their space._

 

_They were black folks._

 

_“The things I heard, Mike,” his daddy whispered. “The screams,” He wrinkled his nose, like he was sniffing, like he was taking himself back to that day over twenty years ago. His hands shook as he brought one up to his face, rubbing over his eyes tiredly, maybe to mask something he didn’t want Mike to see. It took him a while before he spoke again._

 

_“Some of the kids you go to school with, son, their fathers struck the match that lit the Black Spot on fire,” Will explained, staring into the flame of the candle as it flickered with the wind that came in through the window._

 

_“Why, daddy?” Mike asked. Something went dark in his Daddy’s eyes, a curtain drawn over the usual warmth held there, something steely taking its place. The flame from the candle was reflected in his eyes, flickering in the black pupils and turning his irises into honey._

 

_“There’s something about Derry, something in the soil, that makes bad people do bad things,”_

 

_Mike looked in his daddy’s eyes and felt something deep inside him awaken._

 

It’s happening again, Mike knows. The summer was long, dry and hot, giving way to a wet autumn like one from Mike’s memories. The rain drenched the town with a blanket of fog and it brought every repressed memory and dream to the surface, filling Mike’s head with the sounds of screams and cries.

 

Mike hasn’t forgotten.

 

He thought he would have by now, the memories of that long summer nearly thirty years ago melting away until he’s just another blank slate. Derry itself seems to have moved on, tearing down the missing posters and burying the history once more into legend. The curfew was gone and the businesses were staying open past dark, and children walked the streets uncaringly.

 

Then Trisha Declan went missing.

 

Mike thought nothing of it at first, chalked it up to a runaway like the police were saying. Her daddy, Roy Declan, was known around town to be a bit of a bastard when he was drinking and Mike assumed, much like everyone else, that the girl had finally grown sick of it and vanished in the middle of the night.

 

They found her body at the old Standpipe, shoes untied and her eye sockets empty. It was like she was running and got taken out by some animal, the police said. Just an animal, they said. They put their fingers to their lips and hushed the whispers and fear.

 

Next it was Bobby McClain and Rebecca Goldstein and Dean Tiffany.

 

Bobby was found along a ditch on Witcham, his arm gone. They dug Rebecca out of a cornfield on Route 2, her fingernails all torn up like she tried to fight back whatever got her. They haven’t recovered Dean Tiffany yet, but Mike knows. He knows that boy is good as dead, knows that boy got taken by something worse than an animal or a crazed person.

 

Mike remembers It.

 

He’s not sure quite when the memory floated back to him, if it was between dreaming about Henry Bowers and flashing memories of Bill Denbrough, or if it came to him when he was putting another bolt between the eyes of a ewe.

 

He remembers the stench of dried blood, the feeling of wet concrete beneath his fingertips, the sound of little Eddie Kaspbrak’s hitching sobs. He remembers Its yellow eyes, the spit dripping off Its lips and over the clown’s chin, the leathery wings of a vulture flapping in hot summer air.

 

Sometimes Mike worries that he’s the only one who knows, the only damn person in the world burdened with the knowledge of It. Do his friends remember? Do they recall that summer where they killed, where they sacrificed and promised?

 

He keeps telling himself he’s going to stop it this time, he’s going to put an end to It. But kids keep going missing, right out from under Mike’s nose, and he’s powerless to stop it. There are missing puzzle pieces that he can’t find. There are things out there that he can’t learn from books and old stories. There are things he just can’t do alone, no matter how hard he tries.

 

“Did ya hear they got another one?” Someone is saying, just hushed enough to keep up the image of hiding her idle gossip but loud enough that Mike knows they wants to be listened to. It startles him out of his musings, making him drop the pencil he’s holding against the blank notebook paper that stretches out before him. “The Holden’s boy got taken last night,”

 

“My word, what a shame,” a woman says in response and Mike stands quietly from his desk to look around a stack and find the source of the gossip. It’s the librarian, a woman that Mike can’t recall the name of, and another woman. The librarian is sat behind the desk at the front of the building, the other woman leaning over the side of the counter, her hand on her chest in a gesture of shock.

 

Mike takes careful steps toward them, not wanting to interrupt them in the midst of their conversation, lest they clap their mouths shut in the presence of company.

 

“I heard they know who’s been snatchin’ up all the children,” the first woman proclaims, almost as if she’s bragging, and Mike’s heart skips a beat. There’s an image in his mind, swirling and congealing into tufts of orange hair and pale skin.

 

“The youngest Holden girl said she saw who her brother walked off with,” she continues, lowering her voice so much that Mike struggles to catch all the words. The atmosphere of the library has gone still, almost as if the entire building is holding its breath to hear what she has to say, and Mike finds himself trying not to breathe while she pauses.

 

“I thought the police been saying it was animals,” the second woman contradicts and Mike watches the librarian shake her head.

  
“She said it was a boy who took him,” The librarian says and Mike’s world slows to a stop. A boy? He doesn’t remember any of the Losers seeing a regular boy, it was always something unreal and grotesque. Mike remembers the bird, remembers the vulture going in circles over his head and swooping down to take him away. It never manifested as a regular person.

 

“Excuse me,” Mike says, cutting into the conversation. The librarians look to him, stopped dead in the tracks of their gossip. The library is silent again, all attention focused on Mike as he clenches his fists and tries to stay calm. “Did you say they saw who took him?”

 

“Now, Mr. Hanlon,” she starts apologetically, “I only know what the other ladies been saying.”

 

The answer is on the tip of Mike’s tongue, he knows it. He knows what their conversation is barrelling toward. Deep down, he knows where this is going.

 

“A boy?” he prompts. He tries to raise his eyebrows in a way that looks casually interested but he’s sure he probably comes across more angry than he is interested. He always did have troubles with his reactions, with trying not to be the caricature they expect him to be, the loud angry black man. He’s always tried to quell the parts of him that are loud, that are brash and ugly, but sometimes they come out without him able to stop them.

 

There’s something crawling up his throat now, claws scratching his insides and prying his teeth apart to break loose. He swallows roughly as the librarians share a look and he tries to stop his hands from shaking. There’s no stopping the anger from getting out now, nothing stopping the rage and pain and fucking terror from tearing out of him.

 

“The Holden boy said it was a kid, all right. A boy with bright blue eyes.”

 

 _Georgie_ , Mike thinks immediately.

 

He can see the boy in his mind, Bill’s little brother who kickstarted the mess. One that Mike finds himself still trying to dig out of. He sees Georgie with his yellow rain slicker and his little boots and his paper boat and his big blue eyes.

 

Georgie with his missing arm, a bloody stump that stains his yellow coat red and drips onto a stone floor. Georgie with the bolt gun right between those blue eyes, crying and pleading.  Mike knew at the time that he was a trick, but he didn’t know if Bill was going to give in. The bolt gun was unloaded, unable to kill, but Bill pulled the trigger anyway. Mike watched the facade of Georgie fracture apart under the weight of Bill’s fearlessness.

 

It’s using Georgie to lure new children now, just like it used Georgie to lure Bill down into Neibolt all those years ago.

 

He turns on his heel, gathering his notebook and pens, and tucks them underneath his arm. He leaves the books he was reading in a stack on the front counter, slamming them down next to the woman talking to the librarian, ignoring how startled she looks at the slap of book cover to glass.

 

“Mr. Hanlon?” the librarian calls after him, tilting her head to watch him throw the front doors open.

 

“Have a good afternoon, ladies!” Mike calls back just before the doors can close behind him. He runs down the front steps and all but jumps in the cab of his truck, sticking the key in the ignition and starting her up.

 

Mike Hanlon has a lot to do today after all.

**Author's Note:**

> title and lyrics at the beginning both from Pensacola by Joan Osborne


End file.
